Self-cooling beverage containers have not met with widespread commercial success due to design deficiencies of economy, operability, manufacture, process, health and safety, or convenience. In most cases, manufacture has been impractical due to complexities arising from the integral construction of the beverage container and the self-cooling apparatus that resulted in expensive tooling or expensive and extensive modification of the beverage can assembly and fill process. A recent example is the self-cooling can disclosed in the April, 1987 issue of Popular Science, page 53, showing a self-cooling can which includes a scored capillary tube that is lead into a CO.sub.2 container, internal to the beverage can. When the scored tube is broke, the CO.sub.2 is released and cools the beverage. However, integration of the construction of the integrated container into a beverage can in the manner disclosed in this article would be so expensive as to render this system unmarketable.
Further, efficient cryogenic refrigerants were seldom considered so that refrigerant volumes were too large, displacing too much beverage. The device of Weiss, U.S. Pat. No. 3,269,141, suggests the possibility of frostbite from touching the over-cooled refrigerant cartridge. Industrial refrigerants were recommended in some prior devices, but they are malodorous and possibly poisonous.